Varicose Vein Cheese
It's been a very good week, both professionally and politically, giving me a renewed sense of hope. While I accept that all of this may be dashed, these days I will take anything I can get. This optimism launched into the weekend with plans afoot for my business trip to London in early February, while we have pretty much decided we will be attending Confuzzled later in the year for the first time since 2013. It was weird seeing a number of friends registering for EF yesterday without being amongst the crowd, but I can't be doing with a 6am hotel registration procedure next Saturday nor does Wolfie have the days off to afford a trip to Berlin anyway. We have a number of holiday plans this year, Brexit permitting, and there wasn't enough time in the calendar to book another four days off.
Contrasting these good vibes has been the sense of feeling left out this weekend, particularly over the Manchester meet, where a large number of our local friends went yesterday. My aversion to the venue is well-known, but it would have been nice to have been asked, particularly as we could have done other things while the meet was ongoing. We have noticed over the last six months that we are starting to be left out of things more and more, and I am wondering whether there is anything to this. It seems these days that most of my closest friends live further away and this presents obvious and frustrating problems. Anyway, feeling somewhat sorry with myself and with Wolfie wanting to stay at home and fettle, I decided to go into Bradford to pick up a number of geocaches. There were a few in places we regularly frequent, while I also discovered a pleasant little woodland walk very close to the city centre that I didn't know was there. Alas, there was human activity there with tents and washing being hung up to dry, making the experience a little scary. I certainly didn't hang around too much to pick up the caches in there.
I spent about three hours in Bradford, having to head home shortly before 5pm as we were headed to the Brewdenell Beer Festival in the evening, getting taxis both ways due to a lack of time and the inclement weather. We had invited a number of friends to this, but due to money and illness, none of them could make it. However, Wolfie did have a number of work colleagues going, so we managed to hook up with some people and have a chilled evening. Two of them are huge rock and metal fans, so we started planning trips to one of the local rock clubs while we were also invited to a birthday party, so things went pretty well. Brewdenell is one of our favourite beer festivals as it's quite small but still extensive, with around sixty beers on tap at any given time. We started with a few high strength beers before moving on to the weaker real ale variants just to catch our breath. We then ended with a number of delicious 9-12% varieties. We didn't drink that much in terms of volume and variety, only trying nine beers in the end, but they were incredibly potent, with the alcohol hitting us far more than we thought it would. This meant we got home quite drunk and I inadvertently damaged the key holder we have near the door, knocking it off the wall as I put too much pressure on it. Understandably, due to the drink, today has been a rather slow and lethargic day of not doing very much, not helped by the gale force winds which are making being outside unbelievably unpleasant. Still, with Saturdays our only drink days now as part of our Butterfield Diet plan, coupled with the fact we are aiming to lose weight (I was delighted to discover my weight now is exactly what it was before Christmas - I chalk that up as a win), not much exciting is planned for the rest of the day.
Contrasting these good vibes has been the sense of feeling left out this weekend, particularly over the Manchester meet, where a large number of our local friends went yesterday. My aversion to the venue is well-known, but it would have been nice to have been asked, particularly as we could have done other things while the meet was ongoing. We have noticed over the last six months that we are starting to be left out of things more and more, and I am wondering whether there is anything to this. It seems these days that most of my closest friends live further away and this presents obvious and frustrating problems. Anyway, feeling somewhat sorry with myself and with Wolfie wanting to stay at home and fettle, I decided to go into Bradford to pick up a number of geocaches. There were a few in places we regularly frequent, while I also discovered a pleasant little woodland walk very close to the city centre that I didn't know was there. Alas, there was human activity there with tents and washing being hung up to dry, making the experience a little scary. I certainly didn't hang around too much to pick up the caches in there.
I spent about three hours in Bradford, having to head home shortly before 5pm as we were headed to the Brewdenell Beer Festival in the evening, getting taxis both ways due to a lack of time and the inclement weather. We had invited a number of friends to this, but due to money and illness, none of them could make it. However, Wolfie did have a number of work colleagues going, so we managed to hook up with some people and have a chilled evening. Two of them are huge rock and metal fans, so we started planning trips to one of the local rock clubs while we were also invited to a birthday party, so things went pretty well. Brewdenell is one of our favourite beer festivals as it's quite small but still extensive, with around sixty beers on tap at any given time. We started with a few high strength beers before moving on to the weaker real ale variants just to catch our breath. We then ended with a number of delicious 9-12% varieties. We didn't drink that much in terms of volume and variety, only trying nine beers in the end, but they were incredibly potent, with the alcohol hitting us far more than we thought it would. This meant we got home quite drunk and I inadvertently damaged the key holder we have near the door, knocking it off the wall as I put too much pressure on it. Understandably, due to the drink, today has been a rather slow and lethargic day of not doing very much, not helped by the gale force winds which are making being outside unbelievably unpleasant. Still, with Saturdays our only drink days now as part of our Butterfield Diet plan, coupled with the fact we are aiming to lose weight (I was delighted to discover my weight now is exactly what it was before Christmas - I chalk that up as a win), not much exciting is planned for the rest of the day.